Providing a Personal Perspective of World War II History and the 1940s American Home Front.

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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Native American Heritage Month: Comanche Code Talkers

This month we celebrate Native
American Heritage Month by looking at code talkers of World War II,
specifically the men of the Comanche Tribe.In December 1940, seventeen Comanche were recruited by the US Army to
become code talkers.These men were
assigned to the 4th Signal Company of the 4th Infantry
Division at Fort Benning, Georgia.Here
they received phone, radio, Morse code, and semaphore training.

In August 1941 these
seventeen men were placed under Lt. Hugh F. Foster to develop an unbreakable
Comanche-language code.Foster provided
the men with 250 specialized military terms for which they needed to develop
coded equivalents.Combined with
standard Comanche, coded terms were developed.Here are some examples of those coded terms:

Tutsahkuna’ tawo’i’meaning “sewing machine gun” for “machine gun,”

Wakaree’emeaning “turtle” for “tanks,”

Po’sa taiboo’meaning “Crazy White Man” for “Hitler.”

Comanche Code Talker completed
their training on 30 October 1941, and shortly thereafter went to Louisiana to
conduct field exercises.It took a
military machine up to four hours to transmit and decode a message; however, a
Comanche Code Talker could decode the same message in under three minutes.

Comanche Code Talkers, Ft. Benning, Georgia

Fourteen of the men who
had trained were sent to the European Theater with the 4th Infantry
Division.On 6 June 1944, thirteen
Comanche Code Talkers hit the Utah Beach with Allied Troops.When they landed, they were five miles off
their designated target.The first
message sent from the beach was sent in Comanche from PFC Larry Saupitty and
translated to “We made a good landing.We landed in the wrong place.”

Comanche Code Talkers, Ft. Benning (National Archives)

Maintaining wire telephone
lines and sending secure messages via field phone and radio, the Comanche Code
Talkers served in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany.They served in important battles such as at
Cherbourg, St. Lo, Paris, the Siegfried Line, the Huertgen Forest, and
Bastogne.Several men were wounded
during the course of the war, but all made it home.Their code, like that of the Navajos in the
Pacific, was never broken.

On November 3, 1989, the
French government and the State of Oklahoma bestowed the Chevalier de L’Order
National de Merite (Knight of the Order of National Merit), to three
then-surviving members of the Comanche Code Talkers (Cpl. Charles Chibitty, Cpl.
Forrest Kassanavoid, and Pfc. Roderick Red Elk) at the Oklahoma State Capitol. To learn more, visit the website for the Comanche National Museum.

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The National D-Day Memorialis run by a private, non-profit educational foundation in Bedford, Virginia that seeks to preserve the lessons and legacy of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

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